Pi-Hole with FreeBSD using AdGuard Home

Create a Pi-Hole using FreeBSD and AdGuard Home

1. Bootstrap Bastille Tempalte

   
   Use the following command to download and bootstrap the AdGuard Home template.
   

    bastille bootstrap https://gitlab.com/bastillebsd-templates/adguardhome 

2. Create Jail Using Bastille

   
   The following command tells Bastille to create a jail named adguardhome using FreeBSD 13.1 at the IP address 10.4.4.4 on the loopback network bastille0. See my article on installing Bastille if you would like more detailed explanations for any of these things. The jail name and IP address can be whatever you want, just so long as the jail IP is a reserved local IP address that isn’t already in use.
   

    bastille create adguardhome 13.1-RELEASE 10.4.4.4 bastille0 

3. Apply Template to Jail

   
   Now we apply the template we downloaded in step 1 to the jail we created in step 2:
   

    bastille template adguardhome bastillebsd-templates/adguardhome 

4. Login

   
   You can now login to AdGuard Home by pointing a web browser to the local IP address of your Raspberry Pi. By default, the username should be adguard and the password BastilleBSD!. To get your Pi’s local IP address, type ifconfig: Note that this is the IP of the Pi, not your jail.
   

    root@beastie:/etc # ifconfig genet0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
   options=68000b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,LINKSTATE,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
   ether dc:a8:32:c8:28:4d
   inet 192.168.1.2 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
   media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>)
   status: active
   nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL> 

   
   The default password did not work for me. If you log into your jail using $ Bastille console adguardhome you can change it by editing /usr/local/bin/adguardhome/AdGuardHome.yaml. You cannot enter a plain text password here. Instead, you’ll need to include a hash. You can generate one here. The hash begins with $2y$ and you need to select Bcrypt (Apache v2.4 onwards). If you don’t trust some random website (really, it shouldn’t be a problem), then you can install Apache and use the htpasswd command.
   
   When you login you should see a page like this:
   
   

5. Set up Devices/Router

   
   You can set up devices individually. How to do this will vary depending on the device, operating system, etc. but it will always involve changing the device’s DNS servers to the IP address of your Pi (remember, the Pi itself, not the jail IP). Most home networks have many devices and some won’t even give you the option of configuring DNS settings. It’s much easier to configure your router to use the Pi as a DNS server and this will direct all the traffic on your home network through it.
   
   There are many different router manufacturers so this guide will just cover mine, but the process is pretty much the same for all of them. Also, mine is currently a Netgear, which is one of the most common routers on the market.
   
   First, log in to your router. If you have a Netgear you can type https://www.routerlogin.net to your browser window and it will take you there. You can also just type in the IP address, which is usually 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1. If none of these work you may have to consult the user guide for your router.
   
   You’ll have to sign in. The username and password are usually the same as your username/password to connect to wifi or admin and the wifi password.
   
   Again, consult your manual if this is not the case. Find the DNS settings (in my case, “Internet setup”) and put your Pi IP address as the primary DNS server and 1.1.1.1 as the secondary.
   
   
   
   You’ll want a secondary DNS server in case something happens to your Pi or the public DNS server it relies on. I use Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) because they are reliable and more trustworthy than Google. I like Quad9, but that’s what the Pi is using so it wouldn’t make sense as a backup.